Housework (No complaint here. But can’t you refrain from this without an international event?)

Cooking (No eating.)

Sweeping (Why precisely sweeping…?)

Laundry ( Because men never do laundry.)

Dishes ( Because men never do dishes.)

Errands ( Because men never run errands.)

Groceries ( Sure– buy your groceries another day.)

Fake smiles (Only women have fake smiles; and all women’s smiles are fake. So no smiles — take that.)

Flirting (Awww. Because we’re so dumb we want permission to feel alright about not being forced to flirt.)

Makeup (Because every other day I mindlessly obey male-dominated societal expectations by applying the slave-paint as expected. We all know the fashion industry, the make-up industry and popular women’s magazines are totally male owned and operated.)

Laundry ( I get to not do laundry twice today.)

Shaving (It’s March. Not a problem.)

The women most likely do be excited about not doing these things probably aren’t doing them already.

So my niece is supposed to abandon her 14 month old son for the day? Her cousin, who cares for him on weekdays should refrain from caring for him also?

Are these the things which make me a woman? Are these things exclusively feminine? Are these the things that oppress me?

If all the women who keep our society rolling every day really did strike, the results would be bad indeed. I don’t mean the few who will actually take a paid day off from their jobs, or the few who will pass off their childcare to another woman. Or that dishes will not be done. I mean the things women do that really make this world go around.

Do we achieve peace and harmony through anger? Do we change minds by taking our ball and going home? Also, if you think you need someone’s permission to strike, then aren’t you admitting that you’re a puppet every other day?

As a mere homemaker, I do what I do intentionally. No one forces me and I don’t need anyone’s permission to stop.

The most embarrassing aspect of an event like this is that it can only appeal to 1%-ers; meaning all of us in the first world. People with leisure, time and money to play at it. It accomplishes nothing for the woman who is actually poor, hungry or powerless. You couldn’t promote a movement like this in places where there was actually a problem. If you have the opportunity to choose to take the day off and shop at only small, female-owned businesses, you are one of the privileged, not one of the oppressed.

That being said, I’ve read some commentary from people who ought to know better along these lines: Even if women really struck, the world wouldn’t fall apart. Now if MEN went on strike, everything would grind to a halt. An unfortunate sentiment which would encourage some to say we need a women’s strike.

Please, think about the women in your life refraining from the things they do every day which keep your world running smoothly. Think about what you wouldn’t know without what the women in your life have taught you.

Let’s not confirm the division. Anything which is about dividing the sexes, about pitting them against one another, including the championing of one sex at the expense of the other…all of it tends toward destruction, conflict, tragedy. Nothing good can come of it.

Why? Because we were meant to be compatible, complementary, supportive of each other, invested in each other’s well-being, health, wealth, progress, and good outcomes. We were meant to do things together which neither of us could possibly do alone. Rather than seeking the destruction of one another, we were meant to build together.

And it unwittingly confirms the predictions God made about us at the beginning of human history. Men and women would struggle with each other for supremacy. We would perceive inequality where there was none and fight for our turf.

I think of myself as a human being. We human beings need to love each other, support each other, strive for better things together. If I divide myself from half of the planet, and half of the people in my life, I suffer for it, and so do they.

Gimmicks accomplish little, and division is nothing if not destructive.

The empty space is just a matter of fact. Everything else goes on. The landscape changes. Her house, my house, which I see out my front window, becomes less recognizable by the day. I can never go back in.

Distracting images float into my thoughts regardless of what I am doing or thinking. The last time I saw her, realizing just how very much I will miss her crooked fingers.

How can someone with such a huge presence be gone?

In my mind, I often find myself in that room where we found her nearly every day. We are watching M*A*S*H or looking vainly for a good movie. I am watering her plants and my husband is shooing away one of the wandering residents. Or we are wheeling her out of the dayroom to the gazebo, an escape she loved for as long as possible, to watch the sky over the trees past the other resident buildings.

Or she is still at home. We are sitting with our feet up on either end of her couch recliner, watching episode after episode of Law and Order, or old movies on TCM. Later I’m in her kitchen baking this week’s cookies.

Or I am sitting by her bed on that long Friday. On Saturday my siblings are arriving gradually, one by one, faces distorted briefly as they come in. I’m staring at the picture over her bed in which she stands between my two brothers looking fully twenty years younger than she was.

Mostly I find myself just hovering there in the room with the afternoon light slanting in then dimming toward evening. My husband and I are just with her.

How can such a huge presence be gone?

Here is a conversation from one of those afternoons under the gazebo. My mother, with dementia but articulate as could be, had been indulging in a confrontation with some of the staff. Now, calm:

Mom: What are those buildings? It looks like a school.

My husband: No, it’s just some of the other buildings here.

Mom: …Maybe they’re teaching manners to the elderly.

My husband: They assume they already have them.

Mom: … …Obviously we don’t.

She never lost her true self. I have stories.

Now, no matter what happens, or what I do, I just cannot feel right. I imagined that grief was a little ball of black twine inside of me. I’m getting along OK, I don’t feel any way in particular, I’m just getting through each day. I will feel normal in awhile. Just wait. I am frozen.

Then it occurred to me that my image was wrong. The ball of grief is not a little thing inside me. I am in it. My world is inside of grief.

I can only wait until it wants to go. The grieving person does not control the grief process. No matter how prepared you were for your loss, grief takes its own course. You are at its mercy.

It’s helpful for others to know this. Rather than trying (however sympathetically) to tell someone how to get through (or get over) their grief, we should walk with them through it. No matter how long it takes, or how unexpected the path. Just be kind and present. There’s really nothing else you can do. Or maybe the best thing you can do is to leave them alone with it and let them work through it.

I wish I had written down more of her memories. Let me tell you a little about my mom from my memory.

She was creative. Before she became too impaired to sew anymore, she had been sewing for about seventy five years. She could make almost anything. She never followed a pattern without creating her own alterations. My friend and I were looking at tote bags today at Hallmark and I remembered the huge, wildly printed, sometimes waterproof-lined totes my mom made. With handles that would never fall off. She loved color and loud prints. She was always stylish in her one of a kind handmade dresses. She made her hats, she made our Easter dresses and spring coats every year, she made my sister’s formal prom dresses (several), she made the wedding dresses for all three of us Mercer girls. She loved to make my children clothes: flannel lined denim baggy jeans with huge pockets and elastic waists, delightfully patterned little girl dresses, baby clothes, doll clothes, roomy fleece sweaters with reindeer and snowflakes.

How many of her carefully sewn gifts do I still have? Not that many. How did I let them go? This feels like infinite regret now.

She also loved cooking and was creative there too. There was a health-conscious era where all baked goods had what we called bark and gravel. There was always cake and the smell of cinnamon buns or cookies in the oven signaled the holidays. I have carried on her baking traditions, so at least that isn’t lost.

At the center of my mother’s personality was a diamond hard gem called Self-Determination. Maybe it was really called Opposition or You Can’t Make Me. She died with advanced dementia but that nucleus at the center of her being was untouched.

To the end she knew two things. She knew her children and their children, and she knew nobody was ever going to make her do anything she didn’t want to.

She gave up going to bed when her dementia was advancing. No amount of persuasion would get her out of the recliner and into bed. So there she sat 24/7, dozing sometimes, awake sometimes, regardless of night or day. I once marched over to her house at 2am to convince her to get into bed. By 3:30 I retreated home, angry, exasperated and unsuccessful. The more I persuaded, no matter how I persuaded, the more her heels dug deeper.

She never gave up the idea of going home once she was in the nursing facility. This got her kicked out of the first place because she, with her wheelchair and strength of a kitten, was actively trying to escape. The second place had the locked-down unit where they’re supposed to be prepared for wanderers and escapists. They had to invent new safeguards and change procedures after she arrived. She pulled the fire alarms. They had to hide the elevator button. She was going to bed when she wanted.

In her last conversation, aware that she had had a stroke, confined to bed, she was still asking if I thought she’d be going home soon. She. Was going. Home.

This is one of my favorite Mom stories from my childhood. She would not mind my telling it. My mother was well educated, articulate and intelligent. But few things in the neighborhood made my mom madder than people letting their dogs “go” on our property. If she caught some dog walker allowing their dog to do its business in our yard, or even our sidewalk, they would get an earful. One day she saw a neighbor lady from around the corner doing this and my mom had had it. When the lady tried to justify herself my mother asked her: “How would you like it if I sent my kids over to go in your yard?”

Neighbor lady went off shocked. Little did the woman know that my brother loved this and would have been glad to do it.

I could fill a book with things to tell you about my Mom and maybe someday I will. She deserves it.

Like this:

1. I just finished wiping the icing off the bottoms of a bunch of birthday candles. I’m going to need those again in ten days, and again less than a month later. Why would I buy new ones when these still have a good inch and a half? Crumbs of old homemade icing never hurt anyone yet. I bet moms of two kids buy a new set of candles every birthday and throw them away.

2. My son needed to do zero adjusting when he went to college and shared a room with two other guys. He shared a room with two guys at home too. Maybe my boys were unusual, but they never fought over territory. So at college my son was perfectly content with his bed and his desk; he let the other guys vie for lebensraum.

3. It is essential to learn patience when eight people share one bathroom. It is equally essential to learn sympathy and consideration for others (‘ bladders).

4. Bags and bags of clothing used to show up on our porch. We had never asked for hand-me-downs; people just assumed we could use them. They were right and we were thankful. It would have been difficult indeed to buy new clothes every season for every child. Most of the clothing we received was in like-new condition, and a lot of the items had price-tags.

Perhaps the most valuable component of these acts of generosity was that my kids learned that a second-hand item in good condition does not differ one iota from a brand-new one. There is shame neither in sharing nor receiving, and there is nothing which so inspires giving than receiving.

5. My kids are now adults who don’t expect the world to hand them all the amenities– partly because we didn’t teach them to expect gifts except on Christmas and their birthdays. They didn’t expect candy except on Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.

My oldest daughter was honestly judgmental about her friends expecting big gifts for Easter and lesser holidays. My kids know how to delay gratification, and although they do not always practice it, they know how to be frugal.

6. Reduce, reuse, recycle. It was our lifestyle before the motto was coined. I was raised by children of the Depression and learned to make my spending count. When I was growing up, we didn’t spend money on non-essentials but we had all we needed. We weren’t used to vacations and we were usually the last of our friends to get the latest tech like color TV.

We raised our kids with the same mindset: one not deprivation but careful frugality. Spend when you need to without regret, but save whenever you can for future needs. We didn’t spend much on vacations. We drove our cars until they were junk. Eating out or ordering in was a rare special occasion.

7. Contrary to popular assumption, big families have small footprints. We eight use approximately the same resources that the four of you, or the two of you, do.

At the same time they condemn parents of several kids for selfish and wasteful American materialism, my childfree acquaintances espouse the superior lifestyle of spontaneously flying the globe, to stay at the priciest family-free resorts, indulging themselves in only the finest and most select perks that the self-absorbed can devise. Driving further to shop for only the trendiest fair trade items.

I’ll compare my eight-person staycation expenses to your two-person dream trip any day you like. Guess who comes out using up more of earth’s precious resources? Virtue-signaling and Childfree -signaling don’t mix.

8. Happy families. Positive family experiences. Fostering a concept of unconditional belonging. We believe that being plunked in the middle of a bunch of other difficult human beings is actually according to a wise plan; we are each more or less compelled to learn how to live in peace with these other people, which teaches us valuable lessons about how to get along in a world full of other people.

9. Raising people who want to have children and build families, and who see the importance and enduring value of pouring their lives into others and investing themselves in creating a unique family culture which will continue to influence after they are gone.

In other words, small footprints may lead to small footprints.

10. Today, a large family orientation usually develops within a faith orientation. Our society has moved toward smaller families with the advent of birth control and the cult of personal fulfillment. I might also say with the de-emphasis of faith culture and the growth of materialist culture. It is counter cultural to have large families and, counterintuitively, large families very often happen due to deliberate choice. That choice usually derives from faith in the intrinsic value of each person, given by a gracious God.

Because of this faith orientation, the lessons of other-centeredness, the value of family, the hope of enduring heritage, good stewardship of material wealth, sustainability, recycling and reusing–all part of a whole.

Like this:

I attended my aunt’s funeral recently. She was the last of her generation in my mother’s or my father’s family.

Two of her children and one grandchild eulogized her and spoke of her affection and her infectious love of fun. It was acknowledged that she had had an unusually tragic childhood.

My uncle, her husband, passed away about fifteen years ago. Only honor was spoken for both parents. Yet I know there was such turmoil in that home. How does it all add up?

An extremely conflicted marriage which bore legendary stories produced five upstanding, moral, faithful, loving people. And each one produced functional homes and happy families of their own. Such is not always the case.

Somehow a couple who clashed tragically, worked together. They persevered to guide five children to responsible adulthood. The kids had two models who together covered most of the bases and who somehow taught them well to discard the bad examples and to emulate the good.

He was everything good in this world and protection from everything bad.

My cousin had this to say of her Dad. She borrowed it from her brother who wrote it for his eulogy.

It was certainly true for them and their siblings. I knew that he stood in the way between his kids and a lot of negative outcomes. The fact that all five turned out well is the proof of his success.

I knew him as a guy who had a way with stories, who loved to visit his elderly mother (my grandmother, who lived with us) on Wednesday nights for a glass of wine and a lot of laughs. According to his kids he was also a rock-solid course-corrector. In the face of nonsense, he was no nonsense. He poured out his whole life, all of his energy and time, for his family and for his kids.

And here is the thing that I think makes him truly remarkable: he stuck with a marriage that most today would have abandoned. This marriage was not one in which he found comfort, peace, or support. Clearly there was nothing in it for him for many years.

He stayed with his children.

Would anyone say this about him:

He was everything good in this world and protection from everything bad

if he had not chosen to stay and face the conflict every day, and owned the responsibility to keep his family on a straight course?

Today we are encouraged to live our own lives, to pursue our own particular brand of happiness, and to let go of what–and who–makes our lives anything but happy. Just walk away if you perceive another person as “toxic.” In other words we are encouraged to jettison difficulties, and to exclude what–and who–does not serve us.

How will we ever know what kind of people we are? If my uncle had not lived in the crucible, would he have known the steadfastness of which he was capable? Would his children know he was a hero?

It was a different time. He lived by an old code. Men were men. He stood up and did his duty. You can say all these trite things.

But it seems to me old codes and doing one’s duty, being a man and living according to a different time…knowing how men are expected to behave and committing to being a man…are all things that work. Thank God there are people who fulfill their promises, no matter how much it takes from them, who commit without turning back, who endure no matter what comes.

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages

“Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

It is this kind of intentionally vague statement that totalitarians throughout our history have used to establish control and shape societies according to their will.

I see the problem right away, don’t you? Who exactly is everyone? It should be obvious that any despotic body can exclude any group it would prefer from the “everyone” umbrella with ease. Human society has a long history of selective inclusion to the most favored status. Slaves, European Jews, Armenians, Hutus.

Although over 100 organizations and states argued for the right of the unborn to be recognized among that “everyone,” a UN body has excluded the unborn from any rights or protections which international law can recognize.

The latest effort comes from the Human Rights Committee, one of the oldest and better known of the UN treaty bodies. The committee is drafting a legal commentary on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the Right to Life, one of the foundational human rights instruments, that categorically excludes children in the womb and denies their membership in the human family.

The Human Rights Committee has created a contradictory premise within a universal statement. According to the HRC, the right to obtain an abortion is far more significant than “the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

The progressive penchant (born of Marxist theory) is to present two rights as though they are in conflict, make the best use of that conflict, and then to pick a winner.

As though two universal human rights can be mutually exclusive.

In reality, the right of every human being to be regarded as a person should not stand in conflict with the right to reproductive healthcare. It seems logical that if a universal right and a non-universal right are in conflict, the non-universal right is void, or at least questionable. A particular right can be forfeit by its owner; a criminal forfeits rights as the penalty for his crime. But the unborn do not forfeit their rights–the HRC and many others declare that they never posses such rights at all.

Both rights–the rights to life and to reproductive healthcare–are life affirming, health affirming, good things. But that argument as presented by our progressive death culture reveals much: the right to life does stand in conflict with the right to obtain an abortion.

The pro-abortion mind has been tenacious in its preference to present this moral dilemma as a struggle between two interests: the interest of the woman vs. the interest of the unborn fetus inside the woman. Note the entrenched exploitation in the attempt to divide the most intimate co-existence known to humankind.

After which, that mind declares that it does not acknowledge one party–the unborn fetus–as an interest which it must respect. Erase that person from the equation (which you have created)–et viola!–the only interested party is the woman.

And anyone who would deny her rights is perpetrating injustice.

The UN HRC body is a nonsensical entity until it is able to recognize, at the very least, that the plight of the pregnant woman is a plight which involves two persons. From that position, we could then move forward in an effort to ensure the rights of both persons in a realistic manner. As long as we must play pretend while making international declarations, we are making ourselves selfish children engaging in nonsense.

Our cause is to keep the reality of the personhood of the unborn child always before the world. We must not allow the world to erase, forget and ignore the rights of the unborn human child.

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Young adults grow up, graduate from youth group, and leave the church. This is a truth; I don’t want to know the stats.

Why? Maybe many, if honest, would sum it up this way: Once I didn’t have to go to church anymore, I found it irrelevant.

The first blush of real freedom, of having the say-so over where you go and what you do sure is freeing. Sure, you have to get some sort of job, or live on school funding which others provide, and more or less pay for things–but after all you’re over seventeen, and no one can tell you what to do. That’s worth everything. Why spend time anywhere that you don’t find engaging?

But wait. Did you make that decision to leave church as an adult?

Or do you still approach church as a consumer, an audience member, a client–or like a child? Positioning yourself as a receiver, one whose needs you expect others to meet, is what a child does. And church no longer satisfied.

But that is hardly surprising. In order to “get” something out of church, you must take a step out of childhood. You must take responsibility for your own walk.

And in order to be able to do that, you must choose to invest. You make an investment–a commitment–in your fellow church family members.

When you do, you find that those other people are not grown-ups to be dismissed or mocked, but real human beings and creatures of the Creator, on level footing with you. You begin to listen not in order to criticize, but in order to hear wisdom, support, guidance.

Or did you think those people were too lame for God to use, too irrelevant to have anything to offer you?

As long as you wait, like a child, to receive what you want, you will not find what you want as a child, nor what you need as an adult.

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When you can’t say hello to your high school friend after a couple decades without a disclaimer: “Even though we would not agree on politics or religion, I have decided to acknowledge your greeting”–you reveal a lot.

Word of advice, when you can’t even say hi to an old friend without establishing your tribal identity, you have joined a cult. You’ve given yourself over, body and soul, to a controlling party.

You’ve bought into identity politics and applied it to yourself. Peer acceptance is essential, and the virtue signal to the self is as necessary as air. In every social interaction, your identity must be validated.

I’ve been lectured to by a close relative, who actually knows me apart from any cultural caricature, who applied abusive accusations based on a cultural caricature which she supposed fit me. I wasn’t even the offender in this situation but I was close at hand.

I’ve been unfriended, post-hidden, and even once blocked (I was relieved about that one; the blocker was actually getting scary). All of this long after I announced that I would no longer make political comments. I no longer do; I decided that social media is for socializing with new and old friends. Sharing news and pleasantries, songs we like, amusing anecdotes from our lives, and re-connecting with long-lost friends.

But re-connecting can be deflating at times. Warm and funny friends in high school reveal themselves to be cold and distant. Greetings after 30 years need disclaimers. It’s not enough to be politics-free. I am not sufficiently deferential to the essential political consensus. I’m not in the tribe, and so social interaction will be impossible.

All this is very sad. We’ve turned over social reality to social media virtual-reality, and we mistake the one for the other.